Friday, November 02, 2018

Agartala: The movement of flights in the sky of North-East India is gradually decreasing owing to a 2016 amendment of the Route Dispersal Policy by the Civil Aviation Ministry that reduced the mandatory operation of all private airlines in this region from ten percent to six percent only.

This six percent has further diluted as three more states Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and the Kochi of Kerala has been included in the list of backward states which was earlier only North-East and Jammu & Kashmir.
The Rout Dispersal Policy formulated in 1994 kept a mandatory provision of operating ten percent of total flight of every Air Lines in the relatively less profitable routes in North-East and the Jammu and Kashmir which was followed for so many years.

The Civil Aviation Ministry never issued any statement giving reasons for 2016 amendment of the Rout Dispersal Policy reducing the share of the backward states from 10 percent to six percent but there is a reason to believe that the ministry has succumbed to presser of the airline’s lobby who since the beginning was lobbying for this.
01/11/18 Sentinel